Nobody came but Smarty, Smarty.’”
Her mind was so full of her mission, that one day while she was shopping she found herself replying to a salesman before whose counter she stood, “Yes, please. I want one between six and twelve. Truthful and not too mischievous,” and she only realized her mistake when he paused in measuring off the yards of silk she had selected and looked at her as if he thought she was mildly insane and ought to be carefully guarded.
Miss Cicely blushed furiously and tried to hide her embarrassment with a laugh. The shopman laughed too and Miss Cicely, to explain her absurd blunder, confided to him that she was really looking for a little girl between six and twelve years of age who was truthful and not too mischievous, and did they keep any of the sort in stock?
The salesman laughed again.
“Why, yes, madam, we do,” he replied. “Most of them are somewhat older than you want, to be sure, but we have one, at least right here now, that, come to think of it, ought to just fill the bill. Here! Cash! Cash one-hundred-and-five! Cash! Cash!”
As the salesman said no more Miss Cicely concluded he had merely replied to her joking question with a joking answer. He made out her bill-of-sale and placed it with her yards of silk and then again rapped upon his counter with the blunt end of his lead-pencil, repeating: “Cash! One-hundred-and five! Here, Cash!”
Miss Cicely felt vaguely disappointed. Of course she had known that, even in such a great department store as this, they did not have little girls on sale, but the shopman’s manner and his reply to her laughing question had been so serious that, for a flash, she had really thought he was in earnest when he said he thought they had one that might “just fill the bill.”
“It was very clever of him to carry out the joke so completely, any one would have thought him in earnest; but—well,—Miss Cicely was disappointed. She had searched and searched and not even the wee-est sample of a nice little girl had she been able so far to find. And Thursday was the day after to-morrow!
“Dear, dear!” she mused, “what in the world shall I do? The only place I haven’t tried is ‘The Home for Friendless Children’ and I purposely avoided it because I knew grandmamma and the aunts would fly there the first thing, and I thought I’d be superior and discover something quite original. Well, I suppose it serves me right! and my pride ought to go before a fall. But there’s nothing left but an institution evidently! Oh, me! I wonder if there would be a presentable little waif at the Orphan Asylum? Positively I must go there at once and see. How long one has to wait at these shops! Why doesn’t that Cash come?”
Miss Cicely grew almost irritable as she thought of her defeat. She had quite given up the idea of taking the prize at the contest she herself had arranged, but she could not face the ridicule that she knew would be heaped upon her by the family if, after all her fine talk, she failed to “produce” a “specimen” at all. Oh, dear! Why didn’t that Cash——